KOCHI:After a two-week forced hiatus due to the flood, Cochin International Airport at Nedumbassery resumed operations on Wednesday with an IndiGo flight (6E667) from Ahmedabad touching down at 2.06 pm.CIAL officers confirmed the airport had resumed its entire operations with another IndiGo flight to Bengaluru taking off from the airport at 3.25 pm. The Bengaluru flight was also carrying Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
The first international flight of Jet Airways from Muscat landed at the airport at 4.30 pm. As per the flight schedule, between 2 pm and midnight, 33 flights will operate from the airport.The airport was shut down in the early morning on August 15 after water from the Periyar inundated its premises. The floods collapsed a boundary wall, disrupted power supply and damaged runway lights and power generators. The airport was reopened on Wednesday after an inspection and subsequent approval from a team from the Director General of Civil Aviation.
As per initial estimates, the airport suffered a total damage between `200 crore and `250 crore in the floods. The airport’s closure had affected thousands of travellers as it is the busiest airport in Kerala, handling bulk of international passengers mainly from Gulf countries.
The flood had also damaged the solar power units, especially the solar panels, which had made Cochin airport the first one to run on solar power. As air connectivity to Central Kerala was lost due to the airport’s closure, two commercial flights operated from the Navy airstrip at INS Garuda in Willingdon Island.